Trees are changing their colors, the air is nippier and drier, students shed their summer clothes for the heavier jackets, the political election signs dot the lawns. All these can point to only one thing – the Asian Media Access annual Youth Media Camp.

This is the 18th year since the first Media Camp in 1994, and the landscape of the video equipments have changed – from heavy, expensive, analog tape cameras to now hand-held, digital memory card based palmcorders; from multi-thousand dollar editing suits to now a complete video editing suit running on a single laptop. But the art of story telling, and one of the hardest aspect of producing a video, hasn’t changed. And at the media camp, that’s what we hope you will take away at the end of the camp.

So register now. The camp is free of charge, but space is limited. This camp is open to all, but we do have an Asian American focus for high school youth ages 13 – 18.

Asian Media Access’ 2010’s Youth Leadership Camp was held on October 21 – 24 at the Girl Scout Camp Elk River, with about 40 youth attending.

The 12-Hour Film Festival competition included all youth divided into 4 teams. In the first two days, the youth were put through the paces in learning media literacy, photography, video production, and video editing. On the third day, the competition started early at 8 AM, and finished at 9 PM.

The films are to be 5 to 10 minutes long, and they must include the following:

Line of Dialogue: “Really? How does it work?”

Prop: Leaves

Character: Drake/Dandy – World’s top model

Each team also drew from a hat its genre and theme.

Following are the student’s practice work and their film festival entries.